Evaluation of the El Salvador cooperative production and marketing project

The evaluation covers the period 8/88-9/90. The project has had a significant impact on the development of local exporters and in improving competition among them. It has also produced some change in marketing to local processors. During the first crop year (1989/90), 12 cooperatives participated in the project; an additional 12 are slated to produce during the coming crop year. On the negative side, the project design overestimated the capabilities of both the cooperatives and the local exporters. False assumptions regarding the cooperatives' managerial and economic capabilities resulted in a relaxation of the selection criteria for participating cooperatives. This has affected the effectiveness of agricultural TA and raises doubts about the project's ability to provide TA to all 24 cooperatives during the second crop year. Due to unexpected weaknesses of the local exporters, the cooperatives producing fresh export products (melons) had to adopt the risky tactic of marketing some of the melons on a commission basis. These problems have significantly increased the cooperatives' dependency on project assistance, thereby decreasing the potential for sustaining project achievements. It is recommended that this pilot project be expanded to a full project lasting at least 4 years and that it: (1) make the selection criteria for assisting export-oriented cooperatives much more restrictive; and (2) provide export-oriented cooperatives a full complement of managerial assistance in addition to technical agricultural assistance.